Social media sites are also a great way for schools to share success stories such as outstanding GCSE results, awards evenings and photos from school trips... But the question is, how does a school really get the essence of its ethos and often centuries of heritage over in just 140 characters?

A child's background, and particularly their economic situation, should never determine their education and ultimately their future. Sadly, for many young people in modern Britain, this is still very much the case.

Without question, the actions of these young men were insensitive, irresponsibile and idiotic; but there is a pervading irrelevance that supersedes this piece's credentials - one that prevents me from giving the authors the pat on the back they might think they deserve.

I sometimes feel like I am in a competition that no one told me I was entering. No one told me, being a mummy was like starting a race, but I'm here to tell you my friends, it is. As soon as that little windows blinks positive - you are on the starting blocks!

It would be easy to assume that as the recession continues to bite and households tighten their belts, the independent school sector might be suffering. However, there are many independent schools that are not only keeping their heads above water, they are positively thriving.

As a boy in a boarding school myself many years ago, which was single sex until A levels, the arrival of girls in the sixth form was the worst possible distraction to teenage boys about to embark serious exams. Boys and girls perhaps learn differently and approach work in different ways.

I knew nothing about private universities before I started considering my options for higher education - in fact I didn't even know they existed. But deciding to study at LCA Business School right in the heart of central London, has been one of the best decisions I've ever made.

Like it or not, life is a competitive process and we are all subjected to competition on a daily basis. Exams, job interviews and even in vying for the hand of a prospective partner, there is always (well, in most cases) someone else out there trying their best to take the glory for themselves.

Last week marked the two-year anniversary of the British student protests held in opposition to planned spending cuts to higher education and an increase in the cap on tuition fees from £3,290 to £9,000. The rise in the maximum fees universities are allowed to charge students took effect at the start of this term.

In order to have an overview of what happens beyond the classroom, I have recently appointed an Assistant Head for the Enrichment Programme in my school, as I believe that this is part and parcel of a good British education.

The Common Entrance exam is used as an admissions process for academically selective independent secondary schools. Children attend preparatory school to ready themselves for the exams and sit them aged 13.

To misappropriate the quote often attributed to the Duke of Wellington (OE 1784), Ed Miliband's barnstorming speech at the Labour party conference was designed in large part to suggest that the 2015 election will be won or lost according to whether or not its political participants had ever set foot on the playing fields of Eton.

Mastering several languages makes it possible to get rid of the tyranny of monolingualism in the sense that it does away with the very narrow view of the world whereby language and reality have an unchangeable equivalence.

In the wake of London's Olympic Games, debate was raging in the media and through online social network channels about figures published by the Sutton Trust, which revealed that over half of Team GB's winning rowers went to fee-paying schools and our athletes were five times more likely to win medals if they were educated in an independent school.

Contrary to what some might expect as the economy enters into double dip recession, the latest figures published by the Independent Schools Council (ISC) revealed that the number of children being educated privately in the UK has risen for the first time since 2008.